The Speed Bumps of Corsica

Capitalism is destroying the planet. Even the pop is stale. Nobody knows what to do. It’s too huge. I agree with the countryside. We should just let capitalism go. Here in Seattle, capitalism thrives in curves and weird architecture, like the embryonic forms downtown for the new Amazon offices. They look like something out of Alien, a drawing by Neill Blomkamp.

It’s always damp in Seattle. Gray and wet. Remnants of color nourish the glow of dials. The charm of language awakens in nitroglycerine. Things tremble, then blow up. It’s very cool.

I have little regard for fashion. I do like my new shirt. It has a small breast pocket divided in two. One part is just large enough to fit my reading glasses case, which Roberta gave me, a pretty envelope in silky fabric with multicolored, feathery patterns, and a very narrow opening for my pen to slip into.

Here we are waiting for the bank to open. And here we are at Pacific Place. The escalator is deliciously promiscuous. Anyone can get a lift out of it.

Descending is never as much fun as ascending.

Mohair fulfills an important function. I’m not sure what it is yet, but it’s very soft. Life is full of conflicts and fire so that’s a very good thing. I stand around mumbling soliloquys. It’s what I was destined to do.

The air smells of rain. As always.

 I hold my hand out to you. Please take it, and shake. Good. Now we can proceed.

The room walks through itself. Orchids appeal to my sense of exaggeration. I’ve seen people play softball. I know what softball is about. But what are orchids about?

Most experience is improved by eclairs. My cuticles are built on a principle of rumbling. Thunder wrestles the sky into submission. The sky crawls under the bed. All the engines are humming. You can feel them vibrate in the mattress.

Nothingness is never a problem.

Never.

Have you ever lived on a farm? Gravity sculpts space into tractors and chickens. Everything stays where it’s put, or clucks or rumbles. The hills are like magenta crabs.

There’s a certain serenity that can only be found in conservatories. This is because the glass is sometimes frosted, sometimes not. The orchids are mesmerizing this time of year and the epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants. They’re common in rainforests, hotel lobbies, and long sentences. As for music, the octave is most compelling when it’s been spun from codeine.

I have grouse in my eyebrows.

The poem is a device whose subtleties appeal to states of heightened awareness. I become aware of things that float and things that hang, things that magnetize and things that procreate. I find myself in possession of muscle and blood. Bones, too. Lots of those. All fitted together nicely.

Can I sit in your car? I look good in blue. And I can’t enter Hamlet without a suitcase.

I often reflect on what it is to have a body. Things get especially sticky at night. The candle burns, the shadows dance. Unbridled ink sparkles with incident. I seem to be everywhere that I go. I’ve got to fill space with something. The crisis that is language has made a big splash. I feel savage as a coastline. A branch of apple blossom chuckles silently. Even the hills are doing somersaults.

Let me linger a while at the edge of your ship.

Writing permits me to understand concrete. If I bend to look at it, I’m careful. There’s nothing more awkward then bending. Bending requires more effort than growing orchids. But this is arguably a matter of drinking, not descriptive linguistics.

Light peppers the ground. It’s quite pretty. A little mutation is a good thing now and then. No crab is an ordinary crustacean. The carousel sparkles in the Parisian rain. I’m often amused to see people laughing when they work. The whole idea of independence is mostly empty. You can take it or leave it. As for me, I sigh for the lack of wisdom. I’ve always had a problem with my nose. I’m allergic to money and I don’t like it when it runs without me.

Pepper bears a certain similarity to palaver. Both season the gustation of foam.

The thermometer has a coherence similar to squeezing things. I gaze at the bubbles forming at the surface of my pot of boiling oatmeal and think about knots. How many knots are there? The becket hitch joins a rope to a closed eye. The dogshank is a variant of the sheepshank and is also called a pouch knot. It can be thought of as a bowline in which the bights pass through a Z-folded middle part and come back to form a grip on reality, which is slippery, and large, and gets in the way of daydreaming.

Costco is a disturbing place. So much of everything. How can this planet support such grotesque quantities?

The escalator endures its endless voyage. The heat of a fire in an old castle feels healing and perpetual. I’ve never been to Corsica, but I imagine that living in Walla Walla, Washington, is different. I have a feeling Corsica is averse to speed bumps. Virtue is a hard rotunda to maintain. Most of the time, I need a philosophy of friction inflated with laughing gas to function. I like constructing postulations based on the color green. I like to sit and reflect. Perceptions leave furrows of thought in the void that is space. Some words are already in flight.

Late at night, when the train pulls through Missoula, you can feel it vibrate in your bones. It’s a good feeling. Woof and warp are aspects of weaving. Feeling works the same way. The bistro attracts the fiber of conversation and the woof and warp of life is woven in chromosomes. I’ve employed this elevation for obvious reasons. I make bookmarks based on storms at sea. Poetry is always in crisis. I imagine a country of high mountains and warm people, thought interlaced with thought, and come up with the beauty of dereliction. You won’t need speed bumps for that. Coffee is reinforced water. Grace divides into steps. Rise, and take those steps. Take them as you will. Just imagine, once again, what it’s like to live in Corsica, if you haven’t been to Corsica, and if not Corsica, well then, there’s Walla Walla.